A substantial chunk of the "great American dream" is the desire to own a house.  Open any Sunday newspaper and there you will find whole sections devoted to the dream, page after page of pictures and descriptions and maps, all designed to help potential homeowners search out the perfect places to hang their hats. A house represents many things to us.  It is our little piece of the world, the structure that shelters us, protects, and gives us a venue for living.  It is the single most expensive object most of us will ever buy and the place within which, for the most part, no outside political authority has any power.  Whether a three-story row house in Philadelphia, a white-frame farmhouse in Iowa, or a rambling ranch house in California, a house is something most of us would never want to live without.

The writer of the letter to the Hebrews said, "Christ...was faithful over God's house as a son, and we are his house if we hold firm the confidence and the pride that belong to hope."  We are God's house, the house of which Jesus is the master, the house of which God is the builder.  What does it mean, for you and me to be a house?

In this passage, the writer is using the term "house" in both its senses-as a family or a household or a dynasty, and also as a structure, a building.  If we think of the church as building, what does that tell us about who we are?

Every house has a foundation and a floor.  Without these, the rest of the house can't be built.  In the church, there are always a few people who serve in a foundational role.  Sometimes the are the literal founders of the organization, the first members.  But those people who become the true foundation of the church are those who, by virtue of their unflagging commitment and hard work and generous giving, provide support and stability to every area of church life.  Foundation people are sometimes not very visible, and sometimes they go unappreciated, but they are always there, always involved, always willing to do whatever is necessary for the good of the whole.  Foundation people uphold the entire structure.

Every house also has walls.  Walls serve to define space, to separate the various functional units of living, to give shape and form to the entire structure.  In the church, there are always some people who understand particularly well the many areas of mission and education and fellowship and worship, all of which must combine to make for a complete church.  Wall people help focus the work of the church and insure that every aspect of church life is encouraged and enabled so that everything Christ desires of the church will indeed take place.

Every house has windows in its walls.  Windows exist to let in two things: light and fresh air.  In God's house, there need to be many windows, people whose spiritual wisdom and faithful living serve to bring the light of God into the house so that everyone can see and understand God and how God would have us live.  Window people allow the wind of the Spirit to move freely throughout the house, allowing the church to respond to new challenges and to be constantly refreshed and invigorated for joyful and productive life.

Every house has doors to allow people to get in to the whole house and to move about within it.  God's house always has door people, people who invite others to come in, and who help all of the people know each other and work together.  Door people connect the individual rooms and help the different parts work smoothly together.  Door people also make sure that the people can get back out into the world, and allow the church to have some influence in the world.

Every house has a roof, with the primary purpose being to protect the rest of the house from the elements.  And the church needs protection, too.  We live in a culture that is becoming increasingly hostile to Christianity, and so we need people who, through their prayer and their courageous witness to the outside world, protect the church from being spiritually washed out or spiritually withered in the heat of opposition and criticism.  By their outstanding character and their reputation in the world, roof people represent the church to the world in a positive way, and the world understands the value of the church in the larger society.

We could go on and on with this list.  The church needs air-conditioner people who help cool things down, and furnace people who help warm us up.  The church needs bathtub people who remind us of our need to be cleansed of our sin, garbage disposal people who help deal with our conflict and anger, kitchen people who feed our souls with their teaching and encouragement, and workshop people who get down to the nitty gritty work of serving all of the needs of all of God's people who are in the church, and even those who are not.

The writer of Hebrews said that we are God's house "if we hold firm the confidence and the pride that belong to hope." Like any house, the house of God constantly needs maintained, repaired, remodeled, if it is to be a good and solid house.

For the ten years my family lived in Tucson, we lived in our own home.  And we learned that part of owing a house means taking care of it.  And taking care of a house means many things-all of which involve work and money. Let me illustrate.  Not long after we moved into our house on the eastside of Tucson, the roof began to leak.  For several years I patched the leaks, but eventually it came to the point were the whole thing needed replacing.  I rather enjoy being a handyman, or at least, I used to, and so over the course of a year or so, I personally re-roofed the entire house.

Not long before I finished re-roofing the house, one of the two air-conditioning units began to give out.  Now, mind you, in Arizona, air conditioning is a necessity about thirteen months out of the year.  So we paid to have it repaired.  And then it broke.  Again.  And Again.  And finally after a few months of repair bills, we had it replaced.

The house we had bought was built in 1979, and soon after we moved in, we decided the bathrooms were looking very dated.  Actually, we hated them.  So, I launched into the project of redecorating, which meant installing new tile floors and new tile in the master bath shower and tub. All of the do-it-yourself home decorating books lead you to believe that every project can be completed in a weekend.  And so, with great joy and confidence in the fact that we would have a new bathroom within no more than three days, I started tearing out the old tile.  Underneath the tile, I discovered that the walls had pretty much rotted away, so I had to install new wallboard.  But before I could install the new wallboard, there was a suspicious nail in the wall that I had to deal with.  This nail had been driven through a small hole in a steel plate that covered one of the copper pipes running to the shower.  It appeared that the nail might be stuck in the pipe, but knowing that a nail in a pipe would have caused a leak, and this pipe wasn't leaking, I decided to pull out the nail.  I learned that, indeed, a nail can be driven into a pipe and not cause it to leak, but once removed, you have created a second showerhead.  And so I had to wait a day for the plumber to come and fix the copper pipe, so I could put up the wallboard, so I could retile the shower, which I completed after about two weeks worth of hard labor.

The bathroom had finished about a day when Helen noticed that we had a small puddle of water forming under the washing machine in the laundry room.  She turned off the washing machine.  But the puddle grew until the whole room was flooded.  The hot water heater had sprung a leak.  So, we stayed up until three o'clock in the morning draining the hot water heater, because they drain very slowly after a few years of becoming clogged with sediment.  The next morning, the same plumber who had just fixed the pipe in the shower came to install a new water heater.  He was very cheerful.  When he presented the bill, I learned why he was so cheerful.  But at least we had hot water again.  So I took a shower.  And after my shower, I opened the mail, which contained, of course, our homeowners' insurance bill and our property tax bill.  Both of which had gone up.

"Christ...was faithful over God's house as a son, and we are his house if we hold firm the confidence and the pride that belong to hope."  Human houses are held together by nails and glue and mortar.  And they need constant attention, or else they fall into disrepair.  God's house is held together by spiritual power, by believing people, trusting people, praying people, loving people, committed people who will not allow the leaky pipes and creaky doors and faltering furnaces to go unheeded, but will instead, with confidence in God and hope in God's plans for the church, work to build the church into a house worthy of its architect and master builder.

What part of God's house are you?  Are you a foundation person whose quiet support and unshakable commitment enables the rest of the house to stand?  Are you a window person who brings the light of God's wisdom and truth into the church, or who welcomes the fresh wind of the Spirit to bring new life to the church?  Are you a door person, who welcomes others into the church, or who sends the church out into the world to do Christ's work?  Perhaps you are a part of the house that needs a little work, a window that needs to be washed, a door whose hinges need oiled, a furnace whose thermostat needs turned up, a crack in the foundation that needs fixed, healed as it were.

As the house of God, the church is always being built, with rooms added on, walls being moved, broken and outmoded things being fixed and freshened.  And that is why we come regularly to this table, the kitchen table if you will, because we need the spiritual nourishment it provides so that we can be about the business of building and being the church.  As we come, to this table, may our prayer be that God will so build us that all the honor and glory and praise will be to him, the architect and master builder himself.  We are God's house.  Let us hold firm the confidence and the pride that belong to our hope in Jesus Christ.

Amen.

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